its 4am in tokyo and...

i wonder how many letters, blogs, emails, diarys, etc, have started with the words "its 4am in Tokyo." That... no... wait for it... FOURTEEN HOUR time difference is a killer.

so I arrived sometime yesterday evening on a flight bound from LAX on which, lucky me, a 20+ group of Asia bound marines happened to be traveling. as such, i was doomed to travel 11 hours in a middle seat, although luckily between a small elderly, pear shaped japanese woman (who only once visibly displayed emotion - amusement - when i tore open the seaweed packet too hard and got flakes all over myself) and a recent japanese engineering graduate who'd been visiting friends at UCLA and invited me to hang out if i ever make my way over to nagoya (i don't know if this was a "pity the poor american move", a "we japanese actually *are* much friendler than americans" move, or a "i just graduated and work my new soulless engineering job all day and please... just... im so lonely..." move).

oh, and the flight onboard salty snack was fish based! hurray for asia!

thus far i have experienced neither a torrent nor a trickle of culture shock - but bear in mind the whole of my asia experience so far has been getting to the airport, navigating the forbiddingly complex but delightfuly colorful train system to get to my hotel, and crashing head first onto my floor mat . Basically everyone is, you know, japanese, and everyone, you know, speaks japanese (which can be tricky). But other than that... two a thumbs up for Tokyo!

i accidentally left my digital camera USB cable in the states, but pictures of these mundane events and many more will be up as soon as i get a new one. lucky for me, i happen to be in the country that invented my digital cameria USB cable.